


It's Only A Crutch If You're Hobbled Already

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-05
Updated: 2010-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to the s3 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Only A Crutch If You're Hobbled Already

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Nora Norwich for suggesting Michael's past assignment, thereby breaking my block on a fundamental part of this story.

They leave him sitting there a while, nothing to do but stare at the neatly-filled bookshelves and plush furniture and bowl of fruit, listen to the distant ring of heavy boots on metal catwalks, and wonder just what the hell is going on _now_.

Of course, that's the point: mental disorientation is a nice compliment to the physical exhaustion from his day out with Simon. Combined, they might not make him more pliable, but they're almost guaranteed to put him off-balance for whatever happens next.

Michael may be too tired to stand up, but he can still spot a good intimidation technique a mile off--or, as the case may be, when it's giving him the full-court press. He waits it out as best he can.

At least his chair is comfortable.

When the door opens again, finally, Michael doesn't look to see who enters. He doesn't even twitch; just waits as Management crosses the room to stand before him, composed as usual in his neat black suit, as if he hadn't been standing under an exploding helicopter or walking away from an ambulance crash just a few hours ago. He fixes Michael with his calm, steady attention; it doesn't so much as waver at the sound of the door closing and its lock turning, and when he speaks, what he says is just as pinprick-focused: "You look like a man disgusted with mendacity."

It's such an oddly specific phrase. It takes Michael a minute to realise why it sounds familiar; when he does, he blinks, the most active expression of surprise he can muster. "You don't seem like a movie buff."

Management sits on the couch, unbuttoning his suit jacket with a satisfied air. "Neither do you. Still, give you a bourbon and a crutch, something tells me you'd make an excellent Brick."

He'd know the lines, at least. Seven years ago, Michael spent three weeks surveilling the front business for a Turkish arms dealer from a closet-sized apartment with very bad soundproofing above a movie theatre in Cyprus. As it happened, those three weeks coincided with the theatre's Festival of American Classics; he'd quoted Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in his sleep for weeks afterward.

Sometimes in Turkish.

He hasn't thought about that in years. Wondering why Management would make such a pointedly obscure reference, Michael puts on a bland smile and says, "A well-rounded spy is a good spy."

"And you're a very good spy." The old man pauses, clearly for effect. "Unfortunately, you've developed some very bad habits, one of which is lying to yourself."

"That's the mendacity I'm disgusted with? My own?"

The look Management gives him says he's just stated the annoyingly obvious. "Look at yourself, Michael. You wasted an enormous amount of energy trying to avoid this exact outcome. This--" He raises his hands, the gesture seeming to indicate the two of them, the room, the entire facility. "--you being here with me--this was going to happen no matter what you did. Thinking you could get yourself unburned, go back to your old job, your old life..." He shakes his head dismissively. "You've been lying to yourself. That's why you feel such disgust."

Michael stares at him. "I'm pretty sure that's not why."

He catches a gleam of humour in Management's eyes, quickly hidden as he shifts on the sofa, making himself comfortable. "Your little adventure with Simon ensured there's no longer a single agency of the American government that doesn't want your head on a pike."

"So your organisation's not government-sanctioned, then." Management doesn't even blink. Michael can't figure out if that means he's right or just that Management's an excellent poker player, so he adds, " _Officially_ government-sanctioned?"

His blatant fishing expedition earns him the smallest of inscrutable smiles before Management continues as if he hadn't been interrupted at all. "In every way that counts, you're a man without a flag--more than you've been since you were burned, more than since our conversation in the helicopter. You have no country, Michael; no mandate, no oversight. No one wants you but us."

He's been through a lot the past couple days. That's the excuse Michael gives himself for his reaction to Management's matter-of-fact words: a hot-cold flash of panic, something seizing in his chest at the thought of the only cause he's ever believed in--the only rationale he's ever claimed for the life he's led, the things he's done--disowning him utterly, leaving him exposed.

Making him lawless.

It takes him a second to swallow it down, but he does, forcing himself under control, forcing a flippant tone as, outwardly, he shrugs off the hit Management's scored. "There's always a simple life in the suburbs. Picket fence, mowing the lawn every Saturday. Maybe I could get a dog."

The old man's eyes narrow; Michael can't tell if he noticed his slip. "You and I both know how far beneath you civilian life is. Refresh my memory: how many gangbangers, criminals and thugs have found themselves suddenly and forcibly out of work since you've been in Miami?"

Michael grabs hold of one of the few certainties left to him, centring and reorienting himself around it. "That doesn't make me a mercenary."

"Of course not," Management scoffs. "You don't let yourself get paid enough to be a mercenary."

"I work for you and all that changes, though, right?" Michael shakes his head and repeats himself for what feels like the millionth time: "I'm not. Interested."

A look of plain impatience erases every trace of amusement from Management's face. Leaning forward, he speaks, his voice low and severe. "Let me try, one more time, to make this clear: we're not trying to hire you. We have drafted you."

"But _why_?" He shouts it without meaning to, frustration and exhaustion boiling over to make it sound much more petulant than a legitimate question really should. "Why _me_?"

Management leans back again slowly, deliberately silent as he watches Michael reel himself in. Again. "Think of it like this," he says finally, a measured--and unmistakably finite--kind of indulgence in his tone. "You were recruited out of the military because your superiors recognised your potential and wanted to explore it fully. You'd've had a great career in the army, Michael, but it would've been too small for you. This is exactly the same thing. You had a great career as a spy, but it was also limited. We're giving you another opportunity for advancement."

Michael refuses to believe it could all be that straightforward. "The difference is, with the military? They asked me if I wanted to go before they discharged me."

"I know plenty of operatives who prefer working with us to anything they've done before." The way Management says it reminds Michael, bemusingly, of how his mom used to invoke starving children in Africa whenever he or Nate wouldn't finish their dinner. "They find it freeing. They flourish."

Michael thinks of Victor, biting the hand that fed him because he had nothing left to lose, and of Carla, whose agendas got them both killed. Of Simon, who spoke of the atrocities he'd committed with pride on his face and a glint in his eyes, who laughed as he insisted that he was what Michael would become. "I'm not like them."

"Tough. You don't like it, eat a bullet." Management meets Michael's shock with cold, hard eyes, clearly having reached the end of his indulgence. "You're as good to us dead as you'd be in prison for the rest of your life, which is where you'll go if you walk out that door without our protection. We want to bring you into the fold, Michael, but you're hardly unique. If you choose to make yourself unavailable to us--however you choose to do so--don't think for a second that we won't cut our losses and move right on to our next candidate." With that, he stands, his expression aloof as he buttons his jacket. "She's an extraordinary operative. Currently on assignment in the Czech Republic, I believe."

Michael can't help but admire such textbook manipulation: the negation of choice, all his what-ifs and might-have-beens dismissed, belittled, or made unavailable; a demonstrated willingness on Management's part to walk away, leave Michael to the wolves at the door; someone else's well-being--another good person's well-being--placed in direct opposition to Michael's own self-interest.

Most convincingly of all, Michael knows--he _knows_ \--it's nothing but the truth. All of it.

Michael's played Management's role in conversations like this countless times over the years. In every single one, nothing was more coercive than the truth.

"We were in Nicosia too, Michael." Management's voice is softer now. Not gentle--Michael's pretty sure gentle isn't in his repertoire--and not even insinuating, really. Just...quiet. At Michael's look, Management smiles, very small and very sharp. "It suits our purposes to maintain an awareness of who the world's intelligence agencies choose to play in the field," he says, and Michael knows what's coming next, sees it like a dark tunnel closing in around him. "While you were watching that Turkish warlord, we were watching you. Any operative could've drawn that assignment. It could've been anyone in that apartment above that theatre, but it wasn't. It was you. And you caught our attention."

Years. They'd been watching him for _years_ before they had him burned.

That's one hell of a tunnel.

Michael's been sitting too long: there's not a square inch of his body that's not aching or throbbing or otherwise complaining about the day's cracks and bruises, and his chair isn't comfortable anymore. But there's nowhere for him to go, so he stays where he is. "You said I have a big future ahead of me," he says, his voice dull. "What does that mean? Money?" His mouth curls, weakly, with distaste. "Power?"

Management shakes his head. "Service. Purpose. The opportunity for you to use your skills to do something truly meaningful."

It's exactly the answer Michael expected: exactly the right answer, designed to be reassuring, designed to be tempting. Designed specifically for him by anyone who knows him at all.

Michael's not reassured or tempted. But he is very, very tired. "I'd like that."

And Management nods, secure in his own affirmation. "I know you would."

Just like that, it seems, everything's settled. Management walks around Michael, heading for the door with his shoulders straight and his step sure, saying something about settling in, something about hot water and food and sleep in a room, not a cell. And Michael sits in his uncomfortable chair, his decision made for now--just like when he was first burned and decided to stay in Miami, just like when someone's in trouble and he decides to help, this decision he's made is _just for now_ \--and stares straight ahead and waits and waits and _waits_ \--

"Michael?"

Management stands beside him again. Michael doesn't look up, but from the sound of his voice, he thinks the old man must be wearing another of his wide variety of impatient expressions. "Something hasn't happened yet."

"What?"

The words surface in his mind, words he only ever hears anymore in jumbled pieces as he's nearing unconsciousness: the soft drift between wakefulness and sleep, or the hard black slam of injury. "'A click in my head,'" he says, slipping automatically into a clipped Southern drawl. Beside him, Management tenses. "'That click in my head that makes me feel peaceful.'"

Management's reply, when it comes, is barbed with caustic disapproval. "Move over, Paul Newman," he says, and Michael smiles, fleeting and vacant, at nothing. "Michael Westen doesn't even need the props."

End.


End file.
